“Avery, come stand by me.” Puzzled, but nonetheless compliant, he walked to where I stood. “Here, turn this on. Show Tish it works.”
“Fuck you, William!” She said as she lunged towards me.
Sam caught her and then turned her towards him. “Come on, girl… Please – no.”
Her face twisted in a way I didn’t think possible. Her once beautiful brown skin furrowed in loathing and hate. Like a damn that suddenly broke, a torrent of anger was released in an instant, hurting the one person who would’ve defended her with his life. “Shut up, you bumpkin bastard. I’ve had enough of you hovering over me, with your stinking breath and stupid mustache.”
“Tish…” he released his grip on her. She lunged again, but this time Avery tripped her. He calmly aimed his shotgun at her chest before saying, “Stay down.”
“Give me the phone!” she yelled.
I pushed Avery away before he accidentally pulled the trigger. “Help Titouan, and I’ll destroy the phone.”
“You can’t do that,” Titouan and Avery said in near unison.
“Yes, I can. We take care of one another, at all costs, Titouan.” I looked back at Tish. “Deal?”
Her face remained lit in rage. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
“You’ll have to trust me. That’s your only hope.”
“Put it where I can see it and away from Avery.”
“Deal.”
Titouan cried out on multiple occasions as she worked on his arm. During that time, I couldn’t help wondering why she didn’t give him some of the pain medicine we took from Miley’s cabinet. As much as it sounded like she was torturing him, I hoped she wasn’t. After she finished, she tried to move to the back of the Ripsaw. Avery blocked her from doing so. She turned towards me and said, “I need pain meds and antibiotics.” I nodded. She grabbed a bottle of water and told Titouan to take the pills she gave him. “These are for pain and infection.”
“Now for your part of the deal,” she said.
“I think I’ll wait on that for a few minutes until we make sure he’s okay.”
She looked at me with hate in her eyes. “Very well.”
I looked at Sam. “Let’s get going.” We packed up and were on our way in a matter of minutes.
“Somethin’s wrong, son. We already down almost a half tank since we stopped,” Sam said.
“Dammit… and I smell diesel like crazy.”
“I’m gonna need ta take a look.”
“Let’s do it. I don’t want to be stuck out here without fuel,” I said, aggravated about having to stop again so soon after our last stop.
“You and me both.”
I tied Tish’s hands together with duct tape and told Avery to keep his shotgun aimed at her while we were outside. He nodded. “Keep your finger off the trigger,” I told him as I closed her door.
“I need some light down here,” Sam said, already under the truck.
I popped the back hatch to get a lantern for Sam and check our fuel cans. “Fuck!” One of the cans had taken a bullet and was now completely empty. I pulled down the back hatch, and I saw several bullet holes. After further inspection, I found that two of our rifles had taken rounds. The one that hit the gas jug was probably the same bullet that slammed into the dash. More luck.
I grabbed one of the lamps and slid it under the truck. “Gotta nicked line. Get me some of your duct tape, and I’ll try ta fix it.”
Once the line was jerry-rigged, Sam scooted out from under the truck. He shook his head and sighed as he used a handful of snow to try to clean the grease and diesel off his hands.
“I’m sorry, Sam.”
Without any warning, he grabbed the lamp and began bashing it against the ground. Having not got enough of his anger out, he then gave it a toss, nearly falling in the snow in the process. “Fuck ’is shit, son.”
After his outburst, we stood in a long silence. I wanted him to talk on his terms. “Sorry – I just feel like such a damn fool right now. I told a damn woman who aimed ta kill us ’at I loved her. Can you believe ’at?” He said, through pinched lips.
“We were all fooled by her, man.”
“Ain’t the same.”
“I know,” I said. “You need me to drive?”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I ’preciate it… I need somethin ta do.”
I nodded. “I’m going to check on Titouan, and then we’ll get going.”
Titouan’s head hung in a manner you automatically knew something was wrong. I checked for a pulse but knew the moment I touched his cold, blue skin he was gone. “Goddamn it, Tish!”
I backed away from the Ripsaw, never averting my eyes from his lifeless body. I’d like to say I felt grief or something akin to grief, but I didn’t. Instead, I felt a deep cold settling over me – maybe even settling into me. It was the hard cold you got when too much came at you at once, like a scar from a deep wound.
I growled a hoarse, “Don’t let her out of your sight, Avery!”
I turned towards Sam and asked him to help me move Titouan. He gave me a pained nod. We carried Titouan several yards away. We didn’t have anything to dig into the permafrost, so we mounded loose snow over top of him. It was undignified, but it was the best we could do. I wasn’t much for praying, but I stumbled over a silent prayer for him. The wind seemed to blow extra cold at that moment.
I turned away from the mound of snow. “Fuck!”
“Maybe he was goin ta die…” Sam put his hands on his hips. “Damn, son, I know I should hate her. The Lord knows I’m tryin.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what ta do. We goin ta kill her?”
“She doesn’t deserve to live. Not after what she’s done.”
Sam winced. “We get a say in how it goes down?”
“You tell me?”
“I ain’t sure I know what ’at means.”
“I mean can you make the decision that needs to be made, given how you feel about her?”
“I don’t know.” He stared a long while at the ground. “I just wont ta know we have ’at option. I ain’t even sayin I wont ta make ’at call. I just wont ta know I could have say in it.”
“That’s the point, though. You don’t want to make the call. Just say. What the hell does that even mean?”
“You are the most damn stubborn bastard I know. You know what I’m tryin ta say.”
“Sam, I just know she can’t go with us, and sure as hell can’t be part of us. Whether I leave her here to freeze to death or shoot her in the head, she’s dead.”
Sam stifled a sniffle and clumsily pawed at his exposed face. “I know. It just my feelins and all… I know.”
“Whether you believe it or not, I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
After several miles, I finally turned to face Tish. “Why did you kill Titouan?”
“Because I knew you were lying to me,” she said bluntly.
“So, you poisoned him?”
She shrugged.
I nearly fell out of my seat as Sam punched the accelerator. I fought for balance before placing my hand on Sam’s shoulder. There was an appreciable decrease in engine noise and g-force. “You were one of us.”
“I was never one of you,” she said without hesitation, but not averting her eyes away from the darkness that lay outside her window.
“To us, you were,” I said.
“To me, I wasn’t.”
“What now, girl, you suddenly Korean? How in the Sam Hill does ’at work.”
“I know exactly who I am and what I stand for. Do you?”